Chapter 5

Marie:

After ten months, my first sight of my family was through a driving thunderstorm, from the hatch of Mitzep's shuttle. I jumped to the ground, stomach uneasy, as much from the violent maneuvers of our flight as from psyching myself to do what came next. While Dave got absolutely soaked through his clothes as he unloaded my bags, I pulled myself together. I drew on the encouragement and concern radiating from my sister-twin Chessec. Her relief at seeing me alive was mixed with confidence that I would do what was right. More than I felt, but it was enough to lift my spirits. After all, I was home. Tail up, I ran with as fast as I could beside Dave to the van's side door. Slamming it shut, he slid onto the bench next to me. He picked up a large towel and swiped the rain off his face, then offered it to me.

"Drive, James," he said as he waved his arm casually. His rain-streaked face was smiling broadly. I looked up at the driver's seat, where Chessec was seated. Her (dry!) fluffy red tail arced across the aisle between the two seats.

"Hi sister. When did you learn to drive?" Her emotions still cycled through worry- happiness-concern for the future; but she agreed to follow my lead. I kept myself firmly in the present tense, determined to remember our reunion as a pleasant memory, even if things got ugly tomorrow. She agreed to follow my lead.

"It wasn't too difficult, even if I can only drive automatic. I need a hand throttle and brake like this unless it is a very small car. Getting Speed Racer there to let me ever drive is the hard part."

"I tried for years; he just grumbles unless there is something to distract him." I leaned over and bit his ear, then licked him. The exposed skin was still cold. I snuggled against his damp shirt, inhaling his scent as I licked the water off the underside of his jaw. I was surprised and pleased how much I still missed him. Maybe everything would work out OK. Just keep it light tonight, girl.

"Ouch! Your Diyim'yi boyfriends have been teaching you bad habits. What happened to the shy young girl I married?" A pain at that innocent joke, Chessec looked sharply into the rear-view mirror. He made a motion to protect his ear, extending it into a long arm around my shoulders. Fingers rubbing through the fur on my upper chest; a primate's caress, even though the features they sought were located lower down on my belly. Still, I settled into his arms, buoyed by the obvious affection.

I responded, mock-insulted: "That doesn't describe either Chessec or myself. Have you gone and married some human floozy, too?" My own paw began an exploration, reaching down and unfastening buttons.

Chessec threw out the rebuttal, relief in her voice. "He did, but I've got her in the stewpot back home. She's gonna be dinner." She squirmed in her seat, "Marie, restrain yourself until we get home. It's kind of hard to drive with you fondling our husband at the same time. If you can't wait, though, we could always pull into the next rest stop." I pulled my paw out of his pants.

"Let's try that rest stop. Does this seat fold down?"

Several hours later, we arrived home. Hobo the dog sniffed suspiciously for about ten seconds before deciding it was me. I chased him around the yard briefly; then went inside. The house looked achingly familiar. Chessec had not moved any of my collected bric-a-brac, but had added some colorful local rocks and some of her carvings. The biggest changes were in the kitchen and bathroom. Dave had placed a bench step in front of the sinks to accommodate our four-foot height, moving all the frequently used items to the lower shelves. I noticed that the ratio of meat to vegetable items in the refrigerator had shifted decisively in favor of meat.

It was after one o'clock by this time, and while I was poking around, Dave and Chessec got ready for bed. I took the hint, climbing in with them. They forced me into the middle, and I spent the rest of the night shifting one or the other's arm out of my face. Still, I woke up the next morning feeling more rested than I had in months.

The first thing next morning I asked Chessec to let me take Dave off away from the house alone, so that I could talk over our new situation. She agreed, and took the dog with her in the van, saying only that she was going to town to shop. Dave began to suspect it was something serious when I told him I'd sent her away so that we could talk.

He just got that silent look he always gets when he's afraid he's going to have to show some emotion. If he'd had a tail and mobile ears, they'd have been down. When he started fidgeting and finding things to do with his hands, I decided he needed something to keep him busy, so I suggested we walk to the lake. He gladly pulled on a jacket, and we took off together.

"First, and we'll come back to this later; so don't let it slip your mind, I'm going to have two kits in about five months." I fended off the now-expected hugs and manipulation of my belly, pulling him along the gravel road at a brisk pace. "That's the best part. There are other ramifications of this, things you might think are problems, but I want you to think of them as good news too, and I'm going to keep talking until you see this my way. Dave, I want you to remember this, and don't say anything until I finish everything else I've got to say: I love you." He stopped and pulled me around to face him beside the trail.

"That's not a good way to start any explanation. Tell me the worst part now; don't drag it out, Marie." I told him the whole story: about the long arguments and my agreement with Chopka, the final decision to become his junior wife, and finally, that I planned to return to Diyim'yi to raise the child.

"That's all." I tugged him toward the lake again. "That's what I want to do. It doesn't change what I feel about you though." He said nothing. I thought he was going to go completely silent on me, so started to reassure him again. He interrupted.

"Marie, you're fooling yourself if you think nothings changed. Clearly a lot of things have. You've just told me you plan to live with Chopka, raise your kit with him. That's not just a little change." He held up his hand to cut off my retort. "No, lets both be quiet for a bit. I want us to think about the things we've just said." We walked down the hill toward the water. Periodic glances at his face showed a stony expression, and his stride had lost a fair amount of spring. By the time we reached the boat dock and our canoe, mine had too. I frantically searched for something to add to what I'd already said as I helped him lower the boat into the water and grabbed my paddle. He helped me into the canoe, but he held my arm awkwardly, like he had when we first were dating, when he wasn't sure he was allowed to touch me. I waited until he'd stepped in and shoved off the dock.

"OK. I admit things have changed. I'm not even the same person I was before, and a lot of stuff has happened. I'll just say that I still think we have something after ten years of marriage." He stroked the paddle once, reconsidered, then laid it in the bottom of the boat. We drifted out into the pond, the sound of the bow hitting the ripples the only sound. He silently framed two different sentences before he said one.

"It almost makes it worse that I can't think of what you could have done that would have come out better. I'm not angry. I thought I would be, and maybe there was a moment or two during the walk down here, but now I'm not. After all, we talked about you getting pregnant, before you left. I want to offer some simple alternative, and hear you say 'Oh, OK! I'll do that.' but this time you were right, and worse for me, Chopka was right."

Dave's voice broke slightly, and he started to blink back tears. In a decade of marriage, I'd only seen him cry once, and that when he proposed. I wondered if it was time to fling myself on him, like he'd done when I'd rejected him that first time. I took one more breath; and waited.

"But," Dave looked down at my paws in my lap. "You're right. Now I guess I have to share you with Chopka. Your litter could never have a chance to grow up as normal Diyim'yi on Earth." He swallowed hard. "I thought I'd be more accepting, that's all." He drew in a fresh breath with a shuddering sob. I flung.

"I love you Dave, and I think if anyone can stretch themselves around this you can. You are always going to be a special part of me, no matter who else I find room in my heart for." Hanging around his neck, I snuggled my face over his shoulder, holding myself against his chest. He said a few inaudible things, and then put his arms around me. We stayed that way for a good long while. Chessec finally honked the horn to get our attention. Dave turned the canoe and started rowing back to shore.

"She's the other complication, you know. What does this mean to the three of us? Wow, that really shows how far from normal everything has gotten." My sister pointed to a blanket covered with food she'd spread on the hillside above the pond while we'd been distracted. He looked from her (bustling around laying out food) to me (watching him silently) and commented,

"I suppose you two have already discussed this between yourselves?" Chessec tossed a small bite of cheese to the dog before she answered.

"Not until now. I knew what she'd been feeling, that she had developed a strong attraction to Chopka now; I assume he's the father; I certainly knew she was pregnant the moment the ship came into the system." All this came out in a rush, almost free association. I realized then that we hadn't been in range yet when Chopka and I had our own 'serious discussion.' She and I needed to talk. "I don't have all the details, yet." I gave her the short version while we ate.

"I hope you're right, that Chopka has matured more than when I last saw him." I remembered that she had rejected his advances before. "I'm still not going to have more than a professional relationship with the Commander, and you can keep your thoughts to yourself when you're with him, too."

"Being in command of the ship has made him grow up, certainly. Having two wives, both pregnant, hasn't hurt either." Chessec laughed at that image. I explained to Dave.

"It had been inevitable, I suppose. He's not technically married to her, you know. His first wife is actually Ampres, Candroc's youngest daughter, and she wasn't about to let him have kits with Marie first."

"I don't understand."

"It's all got to do with legality and clan custom. He's now your co-husband to Marie, sure enough. Just not through her, like you might think. Through me."

"But he didn't marry you."

"No, you did. And I'm a clan daughter by adoption, so you two are clan brothers."

"I'm more confused. So is he married to Marie, or not?"

"I'm a Second Wife to you both, now. Not that it really matters to me, but tell him what that means, Chessec."

"Marie has accepted a demotion in status behind me, as well as junior to my cousin Ampres. Her children can't inherit under clan law. Effectively, your clan is now absorbed into clan Candroc."

"Like I said, mostly legalism. But I want you to understand the same thing I told Chopka. No fights over me, no glaring at each other. And that's all I'm going to discuss on this topic today. We have a few more urgent crisis, don't we?" Chessec grabbed a notepad out of the picnic basket.

"I guess we do. I got a confirmation from the ship by radio. They made a low pass to recover the shuttles last night. Both made it."

"That's good. I thought the fighter patrols were starting to be scaled back, and Mitzep's idea to come in under the weather took care of the rest."

"So we're back on track? The Canadians have the Envoy and her trade mission, and everyone else is back aboard ship?" I sensed she had another shoe to drop, so to speak.

"Not quite. H'raawl-Hrkh stayed behind. She said that they've found more evidence of the Jaguars being here, and since it's near where Jena is hiding, she wants to go see for herself."

"How is someone her size going to get to Florida?"

"The Canadians have agreed to help. Colin is taking her." Chessec smiled as she mentioned the intelligence officer. I'd have to ask her about it later. "They'd like us to join them, too."

"Dave, we really need to find Jena quickly. Its more serious than just recovering a lost alien. There's Relloc."

"What about him, I mean her? She's human, so she should be able to lay low until we can find the lioness."

"We believe Relloc might be working for an opposition faction."

"From the description, she can't be more than fourteen years old. They'll put her in an orphanage, and we'll break her out."

"She's a trained saboteur. And she specializes in blowing up spaceports."

H'raawl-Hrkh:

Jena was safe, for the moment. The relief my half-human twin was feeling eliminated the twisted knot from my own stomach. I laughed along with her as she found some humor in her new surroundings, attracting a strange look from Colin and Berypt. Wherever she was, she wasn't feeling lost and hunted anymore. When she'd been drugged it had almost put me down too, so strong were our shared feelings after so many months apart. I shook my head and focused on my own body for the first time in days. She could take care of herself, it seemed. Well, I guess she is a native, after all.

"Glad to have you back amongst us," Colin observed. "We're coming into the outskirts of Winnipeg now. We should really look over the itinerary before we get there." We were taking a break from our tour of the prairies in order to meet with his government and welcome the Diyim'yi Envoy and her staff. And get us off the planet, just incidentally. I smiled a toothy smile at him, my mood improved.

"I'll even talk with that twit from Trade Canada, again."

"I wouldn't put you through that. He'll wait for someone who actually wants to talk about VAT rationalization. We've got someone else lined up for tonight, instead."

"Hmm?" Momentarily distracted, I got the distinct feeling Jena was feeling much better, suddenly. I shifted my tail, pinning the end behind an ankle to keep it from twitching. Colin continued on, either polite, or oblivious. He was looking especially handsome, at this particular moment. I concentrated on ignoring Jena, ignoring Colin's scent, trying to catch the nuances of what he was saying.

"That pensioner we were trying to find agreed to tell us what he knows, on the condition he can meet you in person. I think you want to talk to this one."

Colin was right. Gerd Kanzler was 77 years old, but had had a full life, and he remembered an amazing amount of it. If he was telling the truth he had confirmation of Jaguar visits to Earth.

In 1944 Mr. Kanzler was a 19 year-old chemical engineering student, working in a draft-deferred job as a metallurgist apprentice in the German aircraft industry. In late August, he was sent to Mittelwald to work in the A-4 rocket development project. He had the misfortune to have been away from the complex when Von Braun surrendered his team to the Americans, instead falling into Russian hands. Long years of work on Soviet aerospace projects followed, and he was finally repatriated to Germany in 1958. Meanwhile, a close friend who had immigrated to Canada after the war suggested he join him, and he quickly found employment in the aerospace industry there. Joint projects with US companies in the sixties reunited him with other former German scientists, with whom he compared notes.

"At Molynia the Soviets had a technical intelligence center, where the interned American heavy bombers and captured German jet and rocket fighters were evaluated. I was assigned to a design bureau that developed aircraft skins. In the early years we worked to develop thinner and lighter pressurized cabin designs, but in the mid 1950, we changed our focus to heat-resistance, after we received a number of fragments of metal from a wrecked craft. I recognized some as similar to materials the A-4 team had experimented with, but the curvature of the hull fragments suggested a much larger craft."

"The Soviets then told the senior team members about a source to which they could send written questions. I helped draft these messages, and evaluate the replies. They indicated knowledge of materials and heat treatment beyond current technology. Some of the metal samples I've not yet seen duplicated. This communication continued, with gaps of up to a month, for two years. The first answers were mostly drawings and just a few words, later more written responses, implying greater ability to ask and respond to the questions. The grammar was never right for Russian, and almost seemed as if it was being translated from an unknown language, through German, into Russian."

"When I worked for Avro years later, I came across a US technical publication that contained almost the same strange phrasing, except into English. I asked a researcher I'd known from the A-4 days, and he said I'd better not show any interest, if I knew what was right. He added that they had originals from Germany of some of the drawings, and that one of the senior scientists had taken the dictation from an unknown agent. But that the later reports didn't start showing up until he was relocated to Huntsville and worked for the Americans."

"My friend said he went to one meeting where he was sure the mysterious source was present. The army security people put a real fear into them, and then they boarded a military transport with covered windows. They flew for two hours to an auxiliary runway someplace in the south, near the sea, because he could smell the iodine and salt. The meeting took place inside a darkened room, with a screen dividing their group from the other half of the table. The other group had some speakers who were obviously German-speaking humans, while the others spoke a mix of broken German and English, but with difficulty pronouncing certain words. Often there were hisses and growls, he said. Much like yours."

We thanked Mr. Kanzler and left his small cottage. I was thoughtful. Here was evidence of a much longer association between Jaguars and Humans than we'd suspected. I felt it was vital to find out more, and I spent the drive back to Winnipeg convincing Colin to help.

I was glad Annas rather than Mitzep flew the shuttle that brought the trade delegation; I was not looking forward to explaining my decision to him. As it was, I simply greeted the Envoy, welcoming her to Earth; led Berypt and the cubs onto the stairs, then stepped around to the opposite side of the shuttle. I tossed a note rolled into a ball through the cockpit window, then sneaked out the side door of the hangar. Colin had a car waiting.

"Here's your disguise." He handed me a pair of fake glasses and plastic mustache. I laughed, placing them on the bridge of my nose. He glanced over as he drove, smiled, and asked, "I trust you have a better plan?"

"Lets not make it complicated. If I duck down and you pull a blanket over my head, nobody is going to see me in the car. Crossing the border is the only challenge."

"Yes, I guess we could do it that way. These might help, though." He handed me a collar and an envelope with papers inside: shot records, permits for exotic pets, etc.

"And this makes us legal?"

"Not a chance. Nobody is allowed to drive a 200 kilo lioness around in the back seat of their car. They just establish that I made the attempt to follow the rules. It's an excuse to give you a chance to escape. I'll play ignorant, probably just face a fine. It might fool a patrolman long enough to escape."

We drove steadily south, toward the border. After two hours, Colin's cell phone rang. He reminded the caller he was on vacation, covering the receiver and saying to me, "They know you're gone now. The Envoy is much upset. As you can imagine."

"I don't work for her. Your boss knows what we're up to-let him pacify her."

"You'd better take this call, though. They've patched your Captain through."

"Hi, boss." His voice was slightly delayed, they must have been relaying via satellite.

"Yes. I think it's that important. The old man in America might not live too many more years, and I think we need to find out when and if the Jaguars left. Plus, I can help get my sister and Relloc out." More heated words.

"I'll cooperate with Dave and the twins when we meet up with them. Probably next week. Don't worry about us. I'll keep in touch." I hung up on whatever else he had to say, handing the phone back to Colin.

"See, no problem."

"You seem pretty casual about it." I laughed.

"Neither Chopka nor myself are ever going to get another promotion out of the Corps, regardless of the outcome; but if we pull this off, they won't dare fire us. I figure the risk is worth it. Once he stops worrying about his new wife, he'll realize I'm doing the right thing."

The border turned out to be a stroll in the park. Literally. Twenty miles from the crossing, he turned onto a side road and drove ten miles west, then south again until we could see the border strip. He handed me a map, and told me he'd have breakfast waiting on the other side. I waited until dark, and then followed a dry stream bottom across the line. Except for a few far-separated farmhouses, each conveniently marked by a single mercury-vapor light; I didn't see a single sign of life until I was a mile south of the border.

There, while I was resting in a small patch of fir trees, I became aware of two sets of yellow eyes watching me. I regarded the pair of wolves, who clearly had no idea what to make of me. They were cautious, not sure they wanted to tangle with me, but sure anything they met might possibly be food, and therefore worth a look.

"You don't want to make a mistake like that, you two." One cocked his head: he'd heard human speech before. "Boo!" I growled deeply and rose to my feet, towering over them. They fled. "Cute puppies."

I found Dave parked beside the road six miles further south, the sun just lightening the eastern horizon. He handed me an egg Mcmuffin and a cup of coffee.

"If this is your idea of breakfast, this is going to be a long trip." He accepted them back, exchanging for my usual: half a kilo of beef (extra rare) and a hard roll, washed down with fruit juice. He ate the Mcmuffin and dumped the coffee out, filling his cup from a thermos. We watched the sunrise in silence, then got into the suburban and drove south.

"St Paul, here we come. You want anything from the mall?"

Relloc:

"Mash potatoes or succotash?" Another glop of white and green mess goes onto the tray as it slides in front of me. My hair net is slipping again; I push it up with my elbow. The prisoner in the mess line catches a glimpse of flesh through the armhole of my smock, whispers 'nice tits, girl' before he moves on, replaced by another empty tray. Another fifteen minutes on the serving line, then twenty minutes to wash the horrible grease, stink and degradation off before school. I'm not a prisoner yet, myself, although at this rate it's a matter of time. Might as well be.

When I was caught, the authorities assumed I was a simple runaway, but when days went on and nobody claimed me, they institutionalized me. The first time wasn't bad: placement in a temporary foster home. If I'd been patient enough to stay there for a few weeks, I'd have been OK, but I promptly ran away. Juvenile hall was next; plus counseling. It was during their screening they discovered I can't read their stupid language, and my general education level was off the chart. The bottom of the chart. Now, I'm in an access-controlled group home, taking remedial classes half days, working at the county courthouse kitchen complex the other half. With the prospect of three more years of this, until I'm what they've assumed is my seventeenth birthday. Oh, I'll escape first, but I do need the skills.

And not just the formal ones. Humans are weird beasts. They are pack animals, like our big W'parl cousins, with group hierarchy and dominance, but with almost none of the group loyalty. I'm in a dormitory room with five other hard-case girls, and, after a night of black eyes and bruises (there's a skill I don't need these humans to teach me) we get along fine. I'm getting a regular education is petty crime, smuggling and fraud as well as the importance of personal hygiene. I thought the lack of fur would mean less need for hair-care, somehow. It wasn't more than an hour after we had our last fight that two of them were helping me untangle mine.

The girls here are all runaway risks; we have lock-downs, bed checks and close supervision. My roommates mainly want four things: smokes and sweets (easy; several sources if you have money), drugs (a little harder, but still they manage), and sex. Some are willing to trade the third thing for the other two, and one of the maintenance workers is keeping at least two of them supplied. I was attracting more attention because I'm not interested, until I learned to talk a good front, I was suspected of being an informant, although my apparent age makes that unlikely.

School and counseling were easy to fool. The girls helped me think up a story for the counselors, and school; well, I'd already done this once. Thirty or so common characters aren't that hard an alphabet, and once I learned to sound out words I had functional literacy. Television gave me the rest of my education: how to act, and what the average person (at least in her teen femme version) considered important.

About six weeks after I arrived, a something happened that convinced me it was time to go out on my own: That previous night, there had been a space shuttle launch. We were allowed to go out into the exercise yard to watch the big, messy flaming thing (so different from the blue-pink tight blast of our own engines) go up fifty miles away; and afterwards, I saw about six minutes of news coverage before the girls screamed enough to drive me away from the TV controls. Now I knew where to go, and the interview I was given that next morning convinced me the time was now.

"Rellah, this is Doctor Hobart. He is going to try to help you remember some things."

Not a good sign. I looked quickly around for a drug tray, ready to fight; but he only used mild hypnosis. He tried straight interview, then used some flashcard association, pictures of swamp, cars, even a lion (although it was a normal, mane-ed male, not a M'raeenn, like Jena.) I wasted a moment wondering how she fared. I'm fairly sure I stayed lucid through the questioning, sticking to my story. After I while, though, I felt drowsy, so I faked falling asleep until he gave up. I've withstood Jaguar's with hot knives and rubber truncheons-a little interview is nothing. But the line of questioning: they have obviously got the connection between me and the lioness on record somewhere; and when she gets caught, they'll come back to collect me.

That night I walked out of the center at about 2:30 A.M., through a fire door whose alarm I'd spent the past few weeks stuffing with chewing gum. I stood at the end of the driveway dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and white tennis shoes, $4.25 in cash to my name. The distant roar of cars on the highway pointed me toward town; the croaking of frogs kept me out of the sinkholes while I walked.

It took the better part of 12 hours to travel the few miles to the Cape. Two rides, one north with a fatherly older man who lectured me on the dangers of hitchhiking; the other one back south with a handsome, oversexed trucker I left tied up in the back of his rig, $230 dollars and a .25 automatic poorer. He was like an octopus, and he'd have been missing several appendages if he'd gotten beyond simple groping before I knocked him out.

My first night of freedom was spent in a cardboard box near the Intracoastal Waterway, in a town with the strangely sweet name of Cocoa. After cleaning up at a public beach shower, I wandered down to the bus station, watching carefully for any police. On the way I came upon a church-run charity kitchen, and they pointed me to another shelter that would let me use their mailing address. I left them the impression that I was going to stay there that night, but I had other places to go.

I was on the bus for the Cape Kennedy complexes by 9:00 A.M. The human's space launch center resembled our own before the Jaguar invasion, lots of bare metal and concrete, surrounded by damp marshy ground. Most of the pads were unused, museums. Indifferent guards eyed us. Since a shuttle had just been launched, that area was closed to the public, but I memorized the active sections for later. By the end of the day, I'd taken the tour, filled out a number of employment applications for various menial positions giving the shelter's address, and stolen an employee access badge. I had seen a few military and government workers, but various civilian contractors employed most people I saw. If I could get hired by one, I would be well on my way to being on my mission at last.

It took another week before a custodial company contacted the shelter to offer me a job on their third shift cleaning crew. Meanwhile, I'd spent some of my money, buying clothes and makeup to increase my apparent age (now I was a dubious 18, I didn't think anyone would believe 21), as well as having a fake driver's license printed to match my applications. One whole day I spent at the library, looking for evidence of Jena's capture. She seemed to be still on the loose. I fingered the business card I'd been given my first day in custody. No, too dangerous to contact her.

My work schedule made me nocturnal. I slept in the morning (usually in a park, but sometimes at the shelter), rising just as most people started home. When I had some money, I'd 'hang out' at a beachfront bar. By starting conversations with unattached males, I could stay there until time for work, sometimes they bought my food (and they always tried to buy my drinks.) One night a boy discovered blunt trauma (why are human males so sexually aggressive-I was never like that as a fox, was I?)

Every evening at 11:00 P.M., my cleaning crew foreman picked the crew and me up in his old truck and drove us onto the base, dropping us in turn at the building we were to clean. Because I didn't have a proper security background check, I worked at the contracts administration building. It was nowhere near any of the science or engineering labs, let alone the launch complex. But I had access to the offices where they processed records for people who did, and I spent my unsupervised moments looking for an identity to borrow. At dawn, we piled back into the truck and he drove us home.

The night of the beginning of the third week, the foreman took me aside on the way in to work.

"Rellah, (this was as close as anyone could pronounce the hard 'c' in my name in the local dialect) the head office says you're papers are no good. You got better papers to give?" I shook my head. "Didn't think so, so here's what we do." He lowered his voice conspiratorially, "You got until Friday, we can pay you without Immigres hasslin' the company. You quit. I hire you with new papers Monday. You want these papers, they cost you 500 bucks, but they're good papers, used them before. Oh, you don't pay all at once: I take a fifty from your check each week. You want that? Good. You work good."

He handed me a worn set of ID, a driver's license and work permit. I was now Rosale Ybarra, 0nly 17, now, a recent arrival from Guatemala, come to join her naturalized husband.

"Where's Carlos?" The husband. The foreman laughed.

"You don't worry about Carlos. He's got sixteen wives, he swear you're his only one if anyone asks, but nobody does. He gets paid."

Armed with my new identity, I moved up to a cheap apartment and continued to work while Rosale's background check went through. She had been a good girl, like he said, so they shifted me to cleaning the labs. We weren't allowed unsupervised access, but the escort hung around near the door guard, so I was able to continue to snoop. This building seemed to be involved with payload sub-assemblies for the international space station. My original plan involved just sabotage to a rocket launch, but I realized the manned missions were the only ones the news would cover. That meant damaging either the ISS or a Shuttle.

Dave:

I've always done my best thinking while I drive. I-70 between Kansas City and St Louis, being the most boring stretch of the interstate system, and with both vixens deliberately staying out of my way in the back of the van, I got plenty of opportunity to think. The simple side of my brain, the one that likes to believe I live a basically normal life, just kept repeating over and over how much everything was screwed up. I don't give that side much weight. The side that decided 'why be normal anymore?' after we were first (might as well call it by its real name) abducted, just kept repeating 'now the shit is really going to hit the fan.' And it was right, as usual.

We were already in trouble; that wasn't anything new. While it probably isn't legal to hide aliens from the government, and I could always take the excuse that none of the gray-suited goons had ever shown me any proper ID, this was rapidly heading toward out-and out treason. The rational side said I'd passed treason (and murder, too) several months back. At least I had the fig leaf that I had done the right thing: protected my family. In my book, that's always taken precedence. But now, faced with clear indications that a foreign power planned to attack our space program, I still hesitated to tell the authorities. That's just stubbornness, my ego convincing me I can do better than anyone else.

Worse, an opportunity to pass the word anonymously had come and gone. Yesterday, while Chessec and I were organizing our files in anticipation of the trip, and Marie had gone outside to entertain the dog, (I'm sure to give her twin a chance to talk to me alone.) As she downloaded our email onto her laptop computer she laughed and wagged her tail, showing more than her usual interest as she read a message.

"You'll never guess who just sent me an email." I looked over from the CD burner inquiringly. "Cindy K, your old flame."

"The government UFO debunker Cindy? You mean the girl I kidnapped?"

"That's the one. While I don't approve of your pick-up technique, she obviously remembers you. She says, and she emphasizes 'in an unofficial capacity' that her partner Charles and her know where Jena is. She wants to bring her back to us."

"I guess we'd better plan on that. Where is she?"

"Doesn't say. Florida, I'd assume. Should I send a reply?"

"Tell her we're coming, and that you'll get in touch the day before. Don't mention Relloc." And there it was. I don't know if I did it to protect Jena, or my wives, or if that was the point I'd finally decided to throw in with the Diyim'yi. I just know I left it in my court to clean things up, so I'd better not screw it up.

That obnoxious "Walnut Bowls" sign brought my attention back to navigating across Missouri. Unseasonably cold and rainy, there weren't too many cars on the road this late at night though plenty of trucks. I saw a rest area ahead.

"Bathroom, anyone?" One of the vixens stuck her head through the curtain. I was 80% sure it was Chessec. I used to be able to tell instantly. "It should be late enough the rest area bathrooms are empty. Show Marie how we do it." I parked along the curb, the shadow of a large shrub concealing the door. There were several trucks parked in the outside lane, but no passenger cars. I climbed out of the driver's door and walked around and opened the side door. The girls were stripped down to fur. "Ready?"

They took off one behind the other on all fours in a looping course across the grass toward the bathrooms. I walked behind at a slower pace, arriving at the drinking fountain, pretending to drink, playing lookout. They came around the building from the back, ducked behind the concrete entry, one raising up long enough to pull the door open. I listened for female indignation at having the toilet invaded by 'dogs.' I pretended to listen to the weather broadcast on the speaker outside the building until they were finished. A trucker pushed the door open to the men's room just as theirs opened. I smiled, hand low at my side, hovering near my waistband. He laughed as he watched the 'dogs' dash back to the van.

"Cool!" He said, grinning. "Wish I could train my dog to do that."

Chessec took over driving until dawn. We crossed the Mississippi River while I tried to sleep. I lay half awake, not really comfortable. Later, Marie curled up with me; I didn't protest, just accepting the warm, furry body against me. We arrived at our campsite in a stand of mixed hardwood-sugar pine forest right at dawn. Chessec parked the van in our slot and climbed into the back, pulling the curtain behind her. She joined us on the bed, and we all slept soundly until late morning.

Land Between the Lakes recreation area was a strange piece of geography I'd picked for our stop. It was close to major highways, but off the beaten track just far enough to ensure we wouldn't have much competition for a campsite. There were enough woods for the girls to escape on foot if it became necessary, and besides, I liked it. The weather had cleared, and we had a few hours to kill, so I took the girls on a walking tour of the civil war trench line across the peninsula near Fort Donaldson. Marie was certainly making an effort act as if nothing was different, so I resolved to do likewise. We ate lunch on an isolated bluff over the Cumberland River, all of us sitting together on a blanket, enjoying the view. A pontoon boat went past us, the partygoers oblivious.

Back at our camp, there was a dark green Suburban with smoked windows and Canadian tags parked. I left the woods alone and cautiously approached, reassured to see Colin McOwen sitting in the driver's seat. He tilted his baseball cap off his nose and climbed out of the SUV.

"You-all ain't from around here, are ya?" he drawled in a horrible parody of a southern accent.

"You're not either, I'd say." I didn't see anyone in the back seat. "Where's our friend?"

He pointed back where I'd come from. There was a deep cough, and the girls both excitedly greeted the lioness in Diyim'yi. The three of them came out of the wood line together, animatedly catching up in person after six months of cryptic phone sessions. I offered Colin a beer from our cooler, and we settled in to wait until the conversation slowed down enough for English. Meanwhile, he and I brought each other up to date.

"We left Shiloh four days ago. H'raawl-Hrkh has been staying hidden in the back seat and I've been sneaking her into my motel room each night. No real problems. I'll be interested to see what Doctor Gertschbad has to say; we had an interesting conversation with one of his old comrades back home." He told me about the nazi engineer they'd met.

"I'm hoping we find proof that the Jaguars all left earth back then. I've got some leads in New Mexico I want to pursue after this trip. Did she tell you about Florida?"

"Yes. She's reading Jena's mind pretty well, now. It sounds like she's doing all right in Orlando, so we thought it ought to be safe to stop in Alabama for the interview first. She says Jena's worried about the girl who brought her, but they're separated and she doesn't know where to find her."

"I get to be the bearer of bad news, I see." I told him about Relloc's background, and her possible mission. He sucked his breath between his teeth.

"That's going to be sticky. If I contact your authorities in any kind of official capacity, the impact might almost be as bad as if we don't catch her ourselves. But we can't afford to wait too long, because she might succeed."

"It would be bloody. Imagine combining the Challenger with last September. We'd be lucky if your Air Force didn't start lobbing nukes at the foxes' mother ship." I looked over at the girls to see if they were still distracted.

"I know pretty well how Chessec feels, and I'm fairly confident about Marie. They're committed to bringing together both our species as friends. You've been with H'rawl-hrk for six months: what's her opinion?" "She's certainly not got a rosy view of the foxes. They treat her people little better than colonial Africans. She's the educated girl who's been sent to Europe to better herself, and the tensions show sometimes. I'd say she's a skeptic, but as she's told me more than once: the foxes got her out of the harem. I really admire her. She's going to take everything they have to teach her, and she's going to use it as a fulcrum to shift her own society into the modern age. She's one determined lady."

"It sounds like you've gotten to know her better than I did on my brief acquaintance. I've more experience with Jena, who's the quiet on, relatively speaking. As quiet as a woman bigger than most linebackers can be, of course. Both are magnificent." The mountie looked uncomfortable.

"You're not going to ask about our 'relationship' next, are you? I'd never criticize your own family, but I can't see them as anything but aliens. It's a good thing in a way: I've never been able to work with human women without some amount of sexual tension in the air. With her, I can just respect her competence, and listen to her opinion, without any attraction whatsoever."

I held my reply. Given H'raawl-Hrkh's proposal to Marie and myself after only a few day's acquaintance, I wondered what the other side of that 'detached, professional' relationship was like.

Chessec:

We convoyed into Huntsville the following day. I switched over to ride with Colin and H'raawl-Hrkh in order to give Dave and Marie more time to talk. I also wanted to get away from the strange, appraising looks he'd been giving me. We'd always had a more casual affection between us than the two of them shared, more joking and playful; now he was more often seeking additional affirmation that I still wanted him. Apes were tactile enough, he was becoming clinging. I'd done my best to reassure, now he needed to mend his fences with his other wife. Like I'd ever go for Chopka!

At first I thought his jealousy of Chopka was simple male dominance behavior problem caused by the two of them not actually meeting face-to-face to settle the issue. I had seen it growing up, usually when a couple from the countryside moved to town: the male would assume that dominance depended on physical strength; and would be disoriented when his partner selected a mate based on wealth or influence, instead. During the dislocations right after the war, many violent fights resulted.

Huntsville was a medium-size town wrapped around a long ridge. Doctor Gertschbad's small ranch style was in a wooded neighborhood on the summit. We cruised twice before Colin phoned him to confirm our appointment. The two of them drove up the front drive with the Suburban while I parked the van in the woods behind. Marie kept it ready for a getaway while H'raawl-Hrkh and I worked our way into the garage against the main house. Colin was wearing one of our microphones so that we could hear the interview. The two of us were close by in case he needed the additional incentive to tell us his story. We settled in while Dave explained his desire to write an approved history of the events. Colin remained silent in his dark suit, leaving the assumption that he was some kind of government security.

They started by repeating the pensioner's story. The Doctor clucked dismayed as they related his old colleague's fading health, although he sounded ancient and tired himself. He was apparently a smoker, and I was just as glad we were outside. He gradually warmed to his story. The public parts I'd already read when we were first researching the humans: the Doctor volunteered as a docent at the Alabama Space and Rocket Museum, and had a number of tales of the early few years of the space program. Gradually Dave steered him toward the Jaguars.

"Ja, they were like big cats, I'm sure of it. I never saw one full on, you understand…but one put his hand on the document under the screen for a brief second: I could see the claws where we have fingernails." And their voices, they sounded exactly like my cats fighting each other." H'raawl-Hrkh was holding the cat in question, a calico who was staring at her with eyes wide, like he didn't believe a cat could be so huge.

"Sir, when was the last time they were present at a conference?"

"Everything went west to Palmdale, White Sands or Edwards by 1962. I retired eventually; my wife couldn't stand the high desert again. We never saw them again; soon the documents were transcribed elsewhere instead of in our shop. When the manned program started, someplace between Gemini and Apollo, we were building better rockets, so we stayed more with our own designs. We weren't doing any of the reentry shielding work in my lab, so those parts of the hull went out there too. I'm sure what's left of the wreck is at Area 51 now. Ha! If those nuts knew how right they were…."

"I know for certain the Russians knew."

"That's an interesting toolkit. Did you make it yourself?" Dave narrated the rattling of boxes and wrinkling of paper for our benefit. I cautiously peered in the window while H'raawl-Hrkh watched for intruders.

"Yes. I made one for my drafting supplies and precision tools as my Meisterwerk while I was at Peenemünde. I kept it, even while we fled south, and out in the desert at White Sands." He dug into the box of antique drafting supplies, came out with a carbon flimsy wrapped around a small paper box, secured with a dry, cracked rubber band. He opened it, took out a small, intricate mechanical device. "See this? In those days we kept sample stock with us on the shop truck when we did a launch-this came out of my tool kit." He coughed as he chuckled again.

"Nobody ever remembers anything. During Desert Storm they called me in for a one-week consulting job. Seems they had an R-17 (that's a Scud to you young folks) and they wanted me to show them how the guts of it went together. This actuator, I copied it straight from the original in our machine shop, for the Redstone rocket. Well, it turns out our Russian buddies used the same one for theirs, too."

That appeared to be all. Dave let him talk for another twenty minutes, mostly about von Braun and the V-2. I hoped someone else would find time to transcribe the interview: it was a vanishing record of history. We returned to the cars and checked into a motel room near the gate of the arsenal, to clean up and discuss the interview.

"Well, we know that there were Jaguars visiting earth over a 25 year period."

"Yes, but we can't tell if they were stranded when the ship crashed, or if some were a later expedition. As interesting as this is, we really need to press on to Florida tomorrow."

"Agreed. But, since we're here, and there are about three hours of daylight left, I'd like to check out the Arsenal. And I want to take you in with me, Chessec." Dave started flipping through the phone book on the nightstand, ripping out an area map.

"But that's pretty risky. It's a high-security area." Colin observed.

"She can cross the fence and I'll pick her up inside. I know just the spot. He pointed. "You drop her near the back edge of the space museum parking lot, and I'll drive down this road here. It can't be seen from any of the security checkpoints."

"How do you know so much about it? Some of those 'friends' again?" Dave gave one of his broad I've-got-a-secret grins, his first in days.

"Better than that. There are really two things I'd like to check, but I know the security is too strong to check one of them." He pointed to a circle of buildings on the map. "We'll just go here."

"You didn't answer my question," I protested.

"I think I know." Marie shyly raised her hand. He clasped it, warmly. He was enjoying the moment, and he'd forgotten to be mad at her.

"You probably do, dear. We were there, after all." He looked at the rest of us. "Who do you think had that Scud missile back then? The war brought us together, after all. I've been here before, and so has she."

I met Dave right where he asked me to, and we drove slowly around the Arsenal. There were plenty of reminders of early rocketry, but nothing that justified the risk we were taking. He pulled out of the departing rush hour traffic and stopped across from the circle of buildings, next to a massive electrical transformer yard. He handed me the binoculars. Inside, there was a circular ring of heavy cables and suspended wires. In the middle, a single shiny wire held a metal sphere about six feet above a base plate.

"Look at the base. Have you seen one of those before?"

"Not as far as I know." It was some kind of barrel-shape device, permanently attached to a concrete stand. Broad copper straps went from the sides of the barrel into the earth.

"Suppose you were standing in ship's engineering, with your back against the rear bulkhead. What would you see?"

"You couldn't stand there. You'd be where the reaction chamber attaches to the…."

"Right. Recognize it now? Fortunately, we don't. Its been used to dampen EMP tests on that test stand for at least 20 years."

The device was entirely too familiar, now that I had it in context. The humans had the conversion unit of a Nurnkh hyperdrive. All they lacked was the tuning crystals; and the control unit.